Priority Male

So now I'm dead.

The Department of Motor Vehicles screwed up and swapped a couple of forms. As a result, my driver's license was given a new kidney. But the DMV discovered that my spleen had expired without permission, and they declared me "taxably non-viable."

Great. So now I'm dead.

Of course, I almost never got born in the first place. The "Kilowatts For Kids" incentive program in the Cap & Trade Bill nearly took me out of the world, before I ever even got into the world.

We all saw it coming; we just didn't know how to stop it.

Once "carbon credits" replaced actual US dollars, it was just a matter of time before some Congressional committee saw the literary opening - and ultimately, they did - and "carbon-based life-form credits" became legal tender. And so, one day, a hungry neighbor with an upside-down mortgage ratted out my parents, and my fetus nearly got black-market-swapped for 2 weeks of incandescent lighting tax deferrals. Fortunately, the neighbor was rendered taxably non-viable when a rogue Tea-Party maniac bombed him through the Internet.

Safe! For a while. But my troubles as a 'human wanna-be' were just beginning. It didn't help that I had 'special needs.' My Mom described that dark day.

"Mrs. Johnson, we've reviewed your fetal scan (which is not covered) and found that your child may have special needs (which are not covered), so we must insist that you abort your child (which is not only covered but highly recommended). The procedure is free, but there is an income-level-adjustment fee of $4,000, unless you or your spouse belong to a Federally-designated exempt workers union. Do you need any stamps today?"

Fortunately, my distraught mother bought a roll of ninety-eight-cent stamps, which was such a rare activity that it triggered a computer glitch, causing Cheyenne Mountain to carpet-bomb Ontario, and causing the distracted Post Office clerk to screw up. The on-duty sorter aborted my Dad's monthly edition of "Field & Stream," but somehow, they lost my prognosis, I managed to slip past the Federal goalie, and I got to be born after all.

So I beat the American odds: I survived birth. But that, as it turned out, was just the first hurdle.

When I was 5, I had a very close call. Some bored physician at the IRS back-audited my birth, saw something that didn't look right, and they threw me in a lockbox. However, within a few months, Congress decided to raid the lockbox and use me for something else.

Another hurdle! I was starting to get cocky, in a purely American, post-endometriotic way.

But then, at age 6, during an IRS-mandated "General Brain Function & Schedule C Deductions" examination, they uncovered some more bad news. My IQ was low. The IRS physicians determined this due to my inability to appreciate all of the "rights" that Congress kept granting me. I kept insisting that rights came from God. Whew. No wonder they thought me a mooncalf.

A few years later, after tag, dodge-ball, and the other team sports were outlawed by the Simpatico Czar, I was forced by the Diversity Czar to play lacrosse, in a nod to the ancient cultures who really discovered America. During one particularly intense game, I took a hit in the spleen. The opposing team was immediately whisked off to an Anger Management Gulag. But I didn't qualify for a replacement spleen, since my parents didn't belong to an exempted union.

At the emergency room, I had to wait in line behind some star-struck woman who had just "had dinner next to Angelina Jolie's table," and the poor woman had suffered some kind of "brush with greatness" meltdown. I had a ruptured spleen, but she had pictures of Angelina on her cell-phone, so it took forever for me to get noticed. When I finally got to the front of the line, I was informed, via much pointing and gesturing, that I was in the wrong line. Not my fault. I didn't even know there WAS an "English-only" line.

And so it went. In my case, at least.

I lost the End of Life lottery and couldn't qualify for organ management, because of the organ issue I mentioned earlier. I had no spleen, which was a clear violation of the Health Care Bill, page 62,414, paragraph 9, which requires all patriotic Americans to have more internal organs on the left side of their body. As everyone knows, internal organs on the Left are our friends, while organs on the Right want us to die quickly, and death causes cancer, unless you have a spleen to manage it, which I didn't. Catch-22, American Style.

So now I'm dead. I guess it just wasn't my day. Or year. Or life.

Fortunately, though, my parents have one remaining "Child Allowance" right.

If they can scrape up the stamps.